A nation’s education system is deemed to be one of the most vital pillars of a strong societal structure, and is equally responsible for economic growth. Almost all nations across the world have developed their unique models of education after synchronizing the same with their socio-economic structures. But amidst all, the Western education system since the last few decades has developed and transformed itself as one of the most flexible and most accommodative systems of education. The fact that the Western education system is renowned globally, drawing tens of thousands of students from developing nations, is because of its higher funding and prudent administration.

America holds exemplary credentials on this account. One of the first things that the United States did during its developmental years was to invest handsomely on education to create world-class academic institutions. As a cascading effect, the country slowly but surely developed an immense talent and skill base that became one of the key drivers of rapid industrialization and economic growth witnessed from the 19th century onwards in the nation. Even today, the best talent from across the world is attracted to United States because of the nation’s superior educational system and the resulting employment opportunities thereafter. Similarly, Western Europe too treaded the same path, although on a lower scale compared to United States, both in terms of the quality of education and the investment on institutions.

However, in this race for attracting the cream of global talent, the United States is running out of steam as the pressure of sustained recession is taking a huge toll on academic funding. If in 2009, a benchmark year, the US Department of Education’s discretionary funding on education was $155.4 billion, the same in 2013 is $65.7 billion, a shocking drop of $90 billion. The latest report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which brings out an yearly analysis of education funding in the United States, mentions that 26 states in America are reducing their education investment per student in 2013, while 35 states are still investing at levels that are below the pre-recession levels. The report mentions that this has resulted in hundreds of thousands of job losses in the education sector in the past few years, especially hurting the low-income groups in America further as many important school programs targeted at these communities have been the first to be purged. Many schools, colleges and universities have closed down their educational units, augmented fees, abolished extra-curricular activities and even research facilities that were pivotal to drive the innovation fuelling the US economy and its top position in global academia.Read More....

A handful of weeks back, in the ACER PISA test – the OECD's annual global assessment of students' skills (for South and South East Asia) – India came second from the bottom defeating Kyrgyzstan while China topped the list. This acts as the final nail in the coffin of India’s dented education system. In spite of arrays of pan-Indian educational programs, India still has not been able to make education inclusive for all. On the contrary, China since the last four decades has been rolling out ambitious plans to revamp their education system, which is evident from the way they are storming into global rankings.

Chinese education is a very consistent blend of Confucian theories and modern concepts mixed with Chinese national developmental policies. Chinese education, unlike ours, focuses on both socio-cultural and political aspects of the nation. The current Chinese education system extends from the guidelines that Premier Zhou Enlai gave in 1974; guidelines that are popularly known as sì gè xiàn dài huà or the 'Four Modernizations'. And what are these? The education system in China revolves around agriculture, industry, technology and defense – that, as per the Chinese, are pivotal for the country’s development. China today has installed key schools meant for highly academically inclined students. China has adopted a policy of providing nine-year compulsory education to all with a special emphasis on vocational training and higher education. This nine year of compulsory education makes a child conversant with mathematics, science and Chinese literature.

Interestingly, even rural students undergo similar training; and by the end of the ninth year of education, the rural student is at par with his urban counterpart. Contrast this with India, where a high-school student is unable to solve a basic mathematical problem or frame a sentence on his own. Moreover, Indian rural schools are mired with problems of infrastructure and above all suffer largely from the curse of teachers' absenteeism. On an average, more than 30 per cent of teachers are found absent in rural schools. In order to curb this menace, China pays their teachers based on student scores. Thus, a large component of teachers’ salaries depends on their students’ performance. Yet, there’s a balance. The better the school (based on the students' score) more is the fees they charge, thus increasing competition and quality both at the same time. Back in 2007, an article published in BBC stated, “China is now the largest higher education system in the world: it awards more university degrees than the US and India combined... The rate of university expansion has been beyond anything [that] anyone in the West can easily imagine.”

Millions of Chinese students are now abandoning colleges and are opting for vocational schools. These vocational schools are backed up by Chinese industrialists and known for producing ready-for-job candidates. In 2007, China allocated 14 billion yuan to be spent on vocational schools over the span of four years. Vocational education in China, unlike India, is not just confined to manufacturing but encompasses sectors like information technology, tourism and medicine. Vocational training was introduced in China so that educated people wouldn’t have to face the brunt of unemployment and relevant skill development is achieved so that qualified individuals have guaranteed jobs. The government has also introduced projects like the State Project 211, State Project 895 and State Project 111, where special importance is given to top top 100 higher education institutes to enhance the quality of their graduates. The Chinese ministry of education is also striving to meet global standards by inviting the world’s best researchers to work in these institutions, thus attempting to benchmark internationally. India too stressed on higher education – particularly in the tertiary sector – but faced with strong impediments in terms of funding, India is falling in terms of percentage of overall spending. The private sector too plays an important role in India in assuaging the demand-supply gap.

Back in 2003, China invited foreign universities to set up campuses; India passed a similar bill seven years later. Foreign universities have not only brought in global teaching pedagogies into China but have also elevated the level of education in the country. Consequently, China is doing exceedingly well in global rankings of late! In 2009, the Paris based Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development, representing 34 countries, released its Program for International Student Assessment, where the Shanghai region outperformed everyone else to be the top performer in all academic categories! According to OECD, China’s success is more because of its special emphasis on elite schools (key schools) where one is expected to shine par excellence. In 2003, the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) ranking showed that there were 23 Chinese universities amongst 35 featured in total. The top 3 Chinese universities that entered the top 200 worldwide university ranking included National Taiwan University, Chinese University of Hong Kong and Tsinghua University. There are more on the list of the top 500, including institutes likes Beihang University (formerly known as Beijing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics) and Beijing Normal University, which entered the ranking for the first time.

In comparison, India produced a big blank sheet! Not only does India not figure anywhere in ARWU, but it is also invisible in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and QS World University Rankings. India is way behind China in terms of even the number of universities. There are 545 universities in India compared to 2,236 in China. Even in medical colleges, there are about 630 colleges in China compared to 251 in India. The total enrollment in Indian universities is only 4.7 million compared to 11 million in China. The situation was similar some years back too when, in 2004-05, India churned out 464,743 engineering graduates while China produced 600,000 for the same year. Read More....

I have often said that the future of India depends largely upon the future of education in our country. The demographic dividend that so many of us so proudly talk about, will actually be a mirage and also be counterproductive, if we continue with the kind of education system that we currently have in India. Along with eradication of needless delays in the judicial system and a the required massive investment in health, I would rate reforms in education as the most important vision that we need to implement in order to reap dividends out of this young demographic. And we really don’t have much time left.

After six long decades, India finally realised the importance of declaring education as our fundamental right, which was waiting its materialisation since Independence. This, I believe is not only very critical in revamping the entire education system of the nation, but also acts as the stepping stone towards education reforms. Starting with the Sarva Skhisha Abhiyaan program launched in 2001, this process has culminated in a policy that mandates free and compulsory education for all Indian children under the age of 14.

Fundamental right to education also ensures that all schools (be it private or public) have some seats reserved for the underprivileged class of society. This will ensure that all children born in India are more or less assured of at least basic education. However, we need to make sure that school under SSA should have basic infrastructure along with dedicated service providers (read: teachers). Even today there is a shortage of around 3 lakh classrooms at elementary level and 1.70 lakh classroom at secondary school level with more than half of all schools lacking basic sanitary and water facilities.

However, the above steps would reap partial results and would only benefit a single class of society if we fail to bridge gender discrimination in education. Thus, the second critical step that we need to consciously take is to invest massively in education of girls and women. Worldwide, study after study has proven that when the women are educated, the social and economic benefits that accrue to a country are enormous-including the minimization of social evils. One of the key reasons behind the state of Kerala having such envious indicators of Human Development is the high literacy rates for females.

Many state governments have already taken huge steps to encourage the education of girls, the efforts just need to be intensified.

Shortage of teachers is something that ails the entire system. Not only technical colleges like engineering and medical but even secondary education system is facing a dearth of academic staff. The third major reform step that we need to take is to educate or create educators. It has been proven time and again that the quality of pedagogy and teaching in India is abysmally poor. That is because of the ivory tower approach we have taken towards education. Teachers in our system are expected merely to mouth whatever has been prescribed in the syllabus - which itself is often completely obsolete and outdated. It is important for teachers, particularly in colleges, to keep abreast of the latest developments and trends and include them in their teaching modules. That is the only way we will produce graduates who are employable.

The fourth step is that the government needs to implement a more transparent and fair system to evaluate the performance of teachers and educators. Currently, even the worst and laziest of teachers know that they have a lifetime job guarantee with annual increments and much more. A professor at a university in India knows that he will never lose his job. This perverse system actually makes victims out of genuine hardworking teachers who suffer at the hands of absentee teachers who waste time keeping education administrators happy.

Going by official estimates, there is a shortage of 6.89 lakhs teachers for SSA programme and 6000 for Kendriya Vidhyalayas and more than 3,000 teachers for IITs and NITs. Why not have a system where students and parents rank the performance of a teacher?

Next in line is a step that I would recommend as a noble one, and it is the fifth in line. We already spend tens of thousands of crores every year on schemes like the MNREGA. I would be really happy if the funds allocated for such schemes actually go towards the construction of durable school and college buildings in rural areas and small towns. Currently the work done under these schemes provide no long-term social infrastructure. The people working for schemes like the MRNEGA would have an incentive when they realise that it is their children who will eventually study in these schools and colleges.Read More....

Just like the last time I wrote about one of the landmark developmental initiatives of the UPA government – NREGA – this time I decided to write upon an equally, or rather more significant, developmental initiative: Sarva Siksha Abhiyan; an initiative which holds the promise of transforming the entire socio-economic landscape of the nation, if delivered to its potential! Now, there is a big ’if’ here, as going by precedence, each and every developmental initiative of the government has been full of corruption, coupled with delivery inadequacies. And the same has been a reality with respect to SSA as well.

A recent report by British media revealed that millions of pounds of aid for education under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) programme have literally disappeared. The report put this figure at a staggering £340 million, which is around Rs 2,327 crore! To further this report, the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG) investigation found that almost £14 million (around Rs 100 crore) had been spent on luxuries viz. new cars, luxury beds, computers et al, that had no connection with SSA. So much so that around Rs 1.02 crore was transferred into non-traceable bank accounts. Not just that, electronic equipments like air conditioners, faxes, photocopiers, colour television sets et al were bought for regions which had no electricity supply! And that’s just one side of the entire SSA story! Another CAG report reveals that around 68 per cent of the Rs 8000 crore allotted for ‘Elementary Education’ development work, which was spent under SSA, had no records. A 2006 report highlighted irregularities of funds usage to the tune of Rs 470 million in almost 14 states in SSA schemes. A brief glimpse through other media reports, in the span of the last few years, is enough to give a concrete idea about how states like Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh are spending allocated funds on projects that have nothing to do with SSA.

As such, India is amongst the lowest spenders on education. Couple this with the fact that India also houses the maximum number of illiterates in the world! In this light, it is criminal that funds to the tune of thousands of crores get siphoned away just like this. Putting the numbers into perspective, if the total allocated money (Rs 31,036 crore as per the budget 2010-11) were to be disbursed directly to 192 million children (or 19.2 crore children) who officially come under the ambit of SSA, then each student would receive more than Rs 1600 each this year. Considering that a student generally has to pay an average monthly fee of Rs 100 (actually ranges from Rs 70-150 in rural areas) at rural elementary schools in India, giving Rs 1600 annually to students directly would not only enable them to pay the annual fees, but would also result in some extra pocket money! The direct disbursement seems to be a much more rational and fruitful method, when seen in the shadows of corruption and scams. Read More....

We, at Planman Media, have been always very appreciative and excited about any policy that has ever made an attempt to bring in any substantial change in the state of Indian education – especially in primary education. Be it the annual budget or discreet policy decisions, education has always been our primary area of focus and inspection. There are two reasons for the same. Firstly, the returns on investment (in terms of societal dividends) on primary education, including intangibles, are very high; and secondly, knowing the fact that the returns are high, it is the very same primary education which has been subjected to perpetual political negligence and budgetary ignorance over the years. But then, with the introduction of the Right to Education bill (on April 01, 2010) the table seems to be finally turning. This act, at least on paper, holds the promise to deliver free and compulsory education to one and all, till the age of 14, across the nation.

On the face of it, I feel too excited about the idea of right to education for all. But then, whether this act is actionable, given the current education infrastructure of India, remains extremely doubtful. However hard the RTE might try to impart free education, it would never be able to achieve its objective, without enough service providers. And this brings me to my first concern – the RTE has already made it compulsory for all schools to maintain a student to teacher ratio of 30:1. Various pan-India surveys indicate that currently schools are struggling with a ratio of 50:1 (and some schools with 80:1), not to rule out those schools which are running with just a single teacher! With 5.23 lakh teachers’ positions vacant, the attainment of such globally-practiced ratios seems quite challenging. Add to this an equal amount of untrained teachers at the primary level, who have to be trained to match the qualification prescribed by the RTE within the next five years!

Now, the second challenge for RTE is its objective of making it compulsory for all private, unaided and minority schools to reserve 25 percent of total seats in elementary education for underprivileged and financially weak children. In order to make it actionable, the act clearly underlines that any breach of this clause would lead to stringent financial and legal punishments. No doubt, this is a clear attempt to eliminate the economic quandary that in most of the cases comes as a hurdle in any underprivileged child’s elementary education. But again, the problem is that the act does not talk about any concrete mechanism or model that would facilitate in pinpointing such pockets of population; in fact, there is no actionable model to ensure that this clause is not abused. Even if through some mechanism, the underprivileged section of the society is targeted and a handful of underprivileged children somehow manage to get into private schools, it still does not serve the purpose, as here again there are challenges. These so called reserved seats, that promise free education, would only give relief from tuition fees and not from other expenditures – which are quite considerable. The RTE does not consider the cost of school books, education tools, co-curricular fees, extra tuition needed and fees demanded in other development activities, which are quite high in good private schools. According to an ASSOCHAM survey, the costs of sending a child to school in India have risen by whopping 160 percent in the last 8 years and annual school expenses for a single child excluding tuition fees have risen by three folds, while the average annual income of middle class parents has hardly risen by 30 percent or so. So the entire purpose of the RTE would fail as the parents of these children will never be able to bear the extra expenditure. And the drop-out rates would continue. Read More....

So, the women’s reservation bill, which was first drafted by H. D. Gowda government in 1996, finally got cleared in the Rajya Sabha on the 8th of March, 2010. Of all the pending bills, this one in particular was the most contentious as most political parties could neither accept nor reject it, owing to vote-bank politics. Finally, amidst some ugly chaos and commotion, the bill got passed on the 8th of March in the Rajya Sabha. As expected, what followed was customary celebration, wherein all media houses projected the passing of the bill as one of the landmark moments in the history of independent India.

No doubt, the celebrations are too early, as the real test is yet to come; and that is when it goes through the Lok Sabha. Going by the precedence set in the Rajya Sabha, things do not look that simple. From the very beginning the Congress, along with the BJP and the Left , have been in support of the bill; whereas most other political parties have been opposing the bill in its current form. But then, it is also important to understand the contents of the bill that’s making so many political parties oppose the same. It is not just the Rashtriya Samajwadi Party (RJD) or the Samjwadi Party (SP) which has been most visible, the parties representing the backward and the oppressed classes have also been opposing the bill in its current form. In fact, the bill proposes to provide reservation to women at all levels of the legislature, starting from the Lok Sabha to the state to the local legislatures. It proposes to reserve one-third of the total number of seats for women in the central, state and local governments. The political parties who have been backing the bill argue that this bill is going to pave way for gender equality, would fight abuse and discrimination and would work for the overall cause of women who have been historically deprived in India. On the face of it, the arguments sound benevolent and profound as there is no doubt in the fact that women in our society have been pushed to the margins on all socioeconomic counts!

Then what is the opposition’s problem? Lalu Prasad Yadav’s contention has been that such blanket reservation would only invite the elite to exploit the reservation – the poor and marginalized would remain unrepresented. According to him, the reservation is justified only when there is a reservation within the reservation for Dalits, backward classes, Muslims and other religious minorities. Similarly, Mulayam Singh’s argument is that as such 22.5% of the seats in the Parliament are booked for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Now, with another 33.3 % reserved for women, more than 50% of the seats would come under the reserved category! It is not fair for the other stakeholders of the economy to have less than 50% representation left for them. As I said earlier, from a logical standpoint, both these arguments have definite merits, and their opposition to the bill in its current form does make adequate sense, though at the same time, their actions in the Rajya Sabha do not make any sense. Read More....

“All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.”Aristotle

I think this is the first time I have started a write-up with quotes from famous people. I normally do not do that, because I usually feel so strongly and passionately about issues that I simply start writing and words just flow out in a torrent. But I am making an exception this time. And I have strong reasons for doing so.

Let me digress a little before stating them. This will be the 10th consecutive year that I have written and presented an ‘Alternative Budget’. This will be the 5th consecutive year that the ‘Alternative Budget’ appears in Business & Economy (Yes, your favourite magazine – when it comes to sharp, incisive and thought-provoking intellectual analysis – is about to complete 5 years!). For close to 10 years, I have been repeating ad nauseam that India can never hope to be a country that is respected in the 21st century unless there is a drastic and dramatic overhaul of social infrastructure. Apart from occasional good news on that front, budgets over the last decade have been largely disappointing when it comes to dealing with social infrastructure. Of course, lip service and wise quotes from historical personalities have always been offered by successive finance ministers. Of course, ambitious schemes with thousands of crores of budgetary allocations have been launched. Of course, well meaning policies have been designed and implemented. But has there been a really substantive improvement in outcomes? Do poor Indians actually have better access to healthcare now than they had when the 21st century began? Do they actually have better access to education? You know the answers as well as I do.I have often been frustrated and dismayed by the answers. This prompted me to present an Alternative Budget in 2008 with a headline Ban the Budget. My logic was that too much needless attention was lavished on the Union Budget. My suggestion to the Finance Minister was to use the Union Budget to launch some path-breaking policies for the social infrastructure sector and let nitty gritty issues be handled through the year during the normal course. In 2009, I went a step ahead and presented an Alternative Budget with a headline Khao aur Khilao Budget. My logic was simple. I raised a fundamental question: How come China and South Korea with levels of corruption as deep and endemic as India have delivered fantastic outcomes in social infrastructure while India has failed to do so? I also argued that economics was all about incentives and if a Union Budget offered the right kind of incentives, stakeholders in India, too, could dramatically improve social infrastructure. Just in case you are interested in what the Khao aur Khilao Budget suggested, please visit www.businessandeconomy.org/09072009/storyd.asp?sid=4485&pageno=1.

Having digressed a little, let me come now to the theme and headline of my Alternative Budget this year. It is called A Budget for Three Idiots. You guessed it. It has been inspired by the iconoclastic movie that revealed how hollow our education system is. It also offered us hope and redemption. And it told us poignantly that the biggest challenge for India in the 21st century is to transform its education system. The quotes that appear right at the top of this write-up tell me that thinkers and philosophers throughout history have consistently argued that a society, a nation or a civilization simply cannot survive – far from flourish – without the right kind of education. Aristotle mused about the power of education to sustain an Empire more than 2,000 years ago. And in the 20th century, George Orwell, the author of timeless classics like Animal Farm and 1984 highlighted the importance of education in an equally compelling manner.

Of course, you don’t need to be a philosopher to understand the value and power of education to make or alternatively mar the future of India in the 21st century. And the way things are going at the moment, only the naïve will believe that India is on the cusp of an era where it will reap the much talked about ‘demographic dividend’. Just a few days ago, the international body UNESCO released a report called ‘Education for All Development Index’. It tracks the progress made by various nations on the key Millennium Development Goals of achieving universal education by 2015 from 1999 to 2007. The results in the report are sobering, if not disturbing for those who keep prattling childishly about India’s demographic dividend. The rank given to India is 105, below Bhutan, Zambia, Vietnam and Ghana to name just a few. That is not really surprising since India is consistently ranked pathetically when it comes to human development indicators; and justifiably so. More disturbing are results buried in some tables in the 300-plus page report. A staggering 49 percent of the children drop out of school before they reach elementary level. And before you start talking about some sinister western conspiracy to show India in a poor light, please remember that the report is based on government released statistics. Read More....

THIS FILM IS NOT ABOUT THE 3 IDIOTS, IT’S A FILM ABOUT THE MANY IDIOTS RUNNING OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM

I hadn’t read the book, but even before going for the film 3 Idiots, I had heard the movie was based on Five Point Someone. So after seeing the movie, I immediately congratulated Chetan Bhagat on the outstanding philosophy of his book! However, after the controversy, I thought of reading Five Point Someone... and immediately realised the crux of the trouble! The book and the film have about ten to fifteen percent similarity. The book is more of a diary on IIT days without taking a strong stance on anything and without inspiring anyone to think of changing the education system. It has got its locker room humour of friends and is a decent read. But after reading the book, you don’t start thinking of the education system and about how to change it. So, to say that the film 3 Idiots has a lot in common with the book, is totally incorrect...

The Aamir character in the book is a plain rich guy who doesn’t like the education system but does nothing to change it either, completely unlike what Aamir does in the movie. And of course, the character in the book is surely not a gardener’s son, as portrayed in the movie. Neither is he even close to Phunsuk Wangru (the research genius in the movie)... nor does he start a science school... or vanish into oblivion after graduating. The book’s character is not even a topper but one who trudges in last academically. In fact, the book doesn’t even have the quintessential Chatur character, nor does it have even a millimetre of the Javed Jaffrey character. The Principal is not the crazyscientist variety either. And further, the Kareena character in the book actually has an affair with Madhavan; and by the end of the book, they both don’t even get married – they split! Well, that’s how similar the book is to the film. It would be criminal to take away any credit from the extremely talented writers of 3 Idiots and give the story credit to anyone else. Yes, the story surely must’ve been conceptualised around Chetan Bhagat’s book’s characters, but it’s purely a new story.

All I would say is, if you wish to know what is called making a movie out of a book, watch the Clint Eastwood-directed The Bridges of Madison County – you can virtually feel Robert Waller James’ best-selling novel unfold right in front of you, page by page, character by character. Nothing of that sort happens in 3 Idiots. Anyway, that’s not the crux of this article.

On a lighter note, even my mother almost cried after seeing the film. She felt the writers/director must’ve heard me speaking on education during one of my seminars or must have read my articles on the IITs/IIMs and lifted the film idea from there! :-) It took me some time to explain to her that Rajkumar Hirani had made a similar film earlier called Munnabhai... and had there too tried to visualise similar things on the education system. Two concerned people can surely think similarly, can’t they? :-) Read More....